 folks who have not joined us yet this summer for one of these I want to make sure that you know who we all are and who we represent so I'm senator Becca Ballant I'm chairing I represent Wyndham County I'm representative Mike Gintoshka I'm representative of Charlotte and part of Hinesford and I'm on the Energy and Technology Committee. I'm Andrea Papiti I work for the Public Utility Commission and I'm representing them here on this committee. I'm Lauren Glendavid with the CCTV Center for Media and Democracy and also here on behalf of the Vermont Access Network. I'm Karen Horne and I'm with the Vermont League of Cities and Tanks and I work for the Department of Public Service and we also have members of Ledge Council so we also have members from Ledge Council from the Joint Fiscal Office and our wonderful Mike Farron who is helping us guide the ship to its conclusion in all various forms so thank you very much. We're gonna start as we do with public comment so my understanding is there there are some folks who did want to offer some public comments this morning. Come on up please introduce yourself. Wonderful thank you so much. Good morning my name is Rob Chapman I am the executive director of Orchimedia which is the Access Center that's based here in Montpelier. First of all I just want to again express my appreciation for the work that the committee is doing. We feel it's very important. I just wanted to ask I understand that there is part of this process is a public hearing and I wanted to know if it would be possible for us to get the specifics of that sooner rather than later and I'm hoping that maybe by the end of this meeting today we might be able to get a date in a location for that. I know that there are a number of people in our communities that are interested in coming to that public hearing I think it's an important part of the committee's work and be able to hear from those people so that's my sort of request for this morning. Wonderful I will just say I do not think we'll be able to get that to you before the end of the meeting today because we need to have some conversations about where that might be and the logistics of that. Yes. But I hope within the next week we'll be able to post something on the legislative website so that you can get that information out to folks who would like to be present. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Stephen Whitaker from Montpelier. The focus that y'all are wrestling with how to fund the access media organizations. I'd like to spend a few minutes to help you tie together how it affects other the demise of Vermont interactive television a few years ago left a big gaping hole and I would encourage you to assign a task to counsel to search the statutes for all of the references to where video conferencing teleconferencing is utilized. You're probably aware of arraignments etc. But in the budget development process that Department of Finance and Management is supposed to be actively engaged with the public in defining the priorities in the budget development. The only effective tool for that was VIT. And it all they've done now is create a web form and that's totally ineffective. So there's many gaps that are left going forward. Many of the consolidated public safety dispatch is going to necessitate intensive training around the state participation in public utilities commission public hearings and even dockets is going to require interactive television. But I would encourage and I made this point at the PUC that we not settle for a compressed low quality yesterday's technology that we really use it to demonstrate the fiber capacity that we have here in Vermont. The ultra low latency high definition as a way to demonstrate and showcase what our infrastructure is that could support economic development. Part of the reason we're here is the reframing of accounting rules for cable companies which is severely impacting the finance for the access media organizations. I think we need to look at the length of why don't you hold on a second. Yes. Yes. All right. Thanks. Certificates of public good. I would ask you to consider whether or not those need to be reduced from 11 years possibly to seven or five. I'll note that incentive regulation plans governing consolidated. Those are three year plans. But the fact that Comcast CPG ran 11 years and then has been extended through gaming or litigation into you know 14 or more is unconscionable. The public benefits that were to be accrued under the last CPG were not adhered to. And now we've lost several more years. One benefit of financing access media organizations and peg stations from public money would be increased transparency and accountability. Right now it's kind of a loose federation is probably the generous way to say it. Of independent entities that all play by their own rules do or don't archive the footage. Et cetera. So increased accountability adhering to public meeting open records record retention schedules would be an increased benefit of access media organizations being funded with public funds. Are you talking about increased accountability for public access. Yes. Between and among public access and to the people that they are to be serving which is not only cable subscribers but they are in effect the community memory of Vermont archiving and sharing this content. So Stephen we have about four minutes for public comment. Is there anyone else in the room that needs to speak. Great. So if you could. Sure. That would be wonderful. I'd ask you to take a look at the telephone personal property tax. There has been a 10 year docket in Vermont that's been to the Supreme Court twice and it's still it's been 14 months or 15 now and the PUC has not ruled on a motion for reconsideration by Comcast. Again we're gaming the system but telephone personal property tax is in statute and for any company providing telephone owning telephone lines which would include. Boy over coax which would be Comcast and charter which would include boy over fiber which would include first like these companies are supposed to be paying 2.37% of the total infrastructure value of all of their infrastructure in Vermont. Federal valued according to their federal depreciation. But my off the back of the envelope off the cuff calculation is that the last 3 years they have obviously not been paying. We the tax department is not at liberty to disclose who's been paying a new hasn't but you need to get to that information. Calculating the receipts the receipts should have been going up as these hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in telephone infrastructure. And they've been going down dramatically so we don't know how many of the companies are paying. But my calculation estimate is that 3 years recoverable might amount to as much as a hundred million dollars. So asking directly whether Comcast and first light have been paying the telephone personal property tax on their federally depreciated infrastructure would be a good place to start to look for money to fund the M.O.'s. The reliability of these networks is essential that public access stations are in an emergency situation which we are likely to see more of public access stations possibly even including community radio are going to be the the go to for instructions where to get water where to get food who needs taken care of. And so we need to design our networks so they're most resilient and survivable. We cannot have a company a stockholder company like Comcast or first light deciding how much resiliency and redundancy to protect the network with. We need to bring this network reliability in favor with the rationale that that's going to support and keep the M.O.'s online as a place to get current information and know what to do in an emergency. So Steven one more minute. OK. Anything OK. I'll drop it there unless you've got questions. You should always feel free to send your remarks to us in writing as well. And we will make sure that they get posted along with the other information. You've got a relationship between the 10 year telecommunications plan the health IT plan the five year IT plan and an emerging consolidated dispatch plan. All of those plans need to account for the role of the access media organizations in educating. I don't disagree. I just want to make sure we have modest goals for this committee and the amount of time that we have to address these issues. So I appreciate you always give us broad scope and context and it's important but I want to make sure that I'm clear with the audience what our charge is here that we are trying to ensure that long term that our public access TV stations are financially viable because we know that they're critically important to our communities. But I just I want to be clear that we have a very narrow charge here that doesn't mean that there aren't other committees within the legislature that can look more broadly. But I want to be clear where I'm coming from. I don't know if there are other people on the committee that disagree with that sentiment but I want to give you an opportunity to weigh in now. I concur with that. Yeah I concur with that but I also encourage Stephen to come and see today because I think there is a bigger context that it's helpful for us to be aware of. Absolutely. It should be it should be guiding our work. I just I think sometimes in the legislature we we forget what you can get done in five or six meetings and I want to make sure that we are very tenacious about what our charge is and making sure that long term we have a have a funding stream and that is certainly going to be informed by the context. So I appreciate you coming and giving your time and I appreciate that you invited Mr. Whitaker here. So thank you. And as always if there are folks who would like to testify in future we start each meeting with public comment. At this point if there are no more comments from the committee before we begin I'd love to turn it over to Mr. Glanville who is going to be talking about an update on the Comcast CPG. Great thank you Senator. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the time here. We have been working with all of the AMO's through their representatives to resolve this matter also with DPS. We worked diligently through the spring and summer in multiple negotiation sessions with a mediator in place in Burlington and we have successfully resolved the issues before the end of this meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Next week we'll be presenting a filing to the PUC for consideration and adoption for appropriate amendments. So I'm going to go through the details basically of what they are. What I'm going to leave out there are some financial provisions in here as well. I'm going to leave those out at this juncture other than to say there are some next week. But the main issues for consideration. I just want to make sure that since this hasn't been filed with the commission yet that we're just sticking to what will be said and not commentary and such. Is that a good understanding of what we're expecting? Sure. I'm trying to be cautious because since I work for the commission and it hasn't been filed with the commission yet. So great. I mean there is the opportunity. I don't know if we want to consider it that we could do it in executive session. I would have to excuse myself. Is there a chance? I don't know. Clare, what do you think? No, I think you highlighted an important concern because you are a member of the commission or because you're not a member of the staff as the commission didn't mean to promote you so I didn't help you. Yeah, the ethical rules for the courts would apply here everything. I'll just talk them ahead and review them. But something to consider that I had not considered walking into the room. So I could excuse myself. If that feels most comfortable for you then I encourage you to do that. Okay. Thank you. This is one of the things that we've learned from this work group is that there are all kinds of overlaps and somewhat awkward and uncomfortable connections and situations and yet we need all these people at the table for us to wrestle with this issue. So I appreciate your candor and we'll have you come back in when Mr. Glanville is done. Well I'm curious if we should do this in executive session now since because it's going to be taped and aired it's just a brief overview of the parameters. I don't want to overstep and I don't want to in any way muddy any waters of what's going to be filed next week. So the purpose of your testimony on this today is to inform us with regard to funding for the public access stations. Just the overall resolution of the CPG issue. Mr. Purvis. I was going to ask if all the parties signed the settlement and absolutely and it's been here. I don't feel like we need to go into executive session. Probably I don't know I would hesitate to give it a few. Maybe Maria has some advice. Council. I consider this at all and you know just saying that is the concern I'm not exactly sure what the concern is a public document you're discussing something that may or may not be adopted by the PEC. Right. It is it is a public document. Correct. Well we'll be it's not the filing will be public next week. Right. I think when we discuss this the last meeting we anticipated that it would have already been filed by now. OK. So here's what I say. Let's take a two minute recess while I talk to my vice chair and with council and we will reconvene in two minutes. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So I should start by apologizing. I should know by now five years into the legislature you never say we'll take a two minute break that never happens. So I apologize. After discussions with the vice chair and council we are in agreement that we do not want to go into executive session that is not the direction that we want to go in. We are interested in having Mr. Glanville and Mr. Purvis if they're able to to give us a an overview of what the issues are that have been discussed. We do not need to know the details. We understand that it has not been been finalized and it has not been filed. It's not a public document. However the charge of the committee I think it's important for us in order to get to some solutions to understand what are the issues that are on the table. So that is our proposal. I'm wondering if you are each comfortable with that. I am. Great. Wonderful. Let's proceed. Great. Thank you very much. I will not cause any more two minute breaks. I hope. So the issues are pretty succinct that have been resolved. One of the big issues is the issue pertaining to AMO access to the interactive program guide. We believe we have successfully negotiated and resolved that issue. We have a resolution to the issue of line extension requirements. Also there is an issue with what's known as ROS, return remote origination site, also known as return line capability. So that is there as well. Simultaneous live peg programming also resolved. Issues pertaining to institutional network also resolved. And those are the main issues that were under dispute and that we believe have been favorably resolved. Clay, I'm not sure if I missed anything. Thank you. That's a good succinct. That was a pretty quick list. So I got AMO access to program guides, line extension requirements, return line capabilities. Is that what you said? I think that ROS. ROS. ROS, which stands for remote origination site. We also call them return lines. That's the ability to go live from a location like a municipal location. Oh, okay. Like here. Lauren, can you just bring the mic a little bit? Yes, I'm sorry. That's okay. Remote origination site allows an access center to go live from a remote location, such as the state house, for example. Okay, then institutional network you mentioned and was there something else that I missed? I'm sorry, Lauren. That was the last one. That was the last one. The institutional network was the last one. Was there something in between? Simultaneous live programming. Simultaneous live program. That's the ability of an access center to run live programming on more than one channel at the same time. So if you have a P and E and a G channel, you could go live simultaneously from those three channels. Lauren Glenn is my translator this morning. Technical mumbo jumbo, so thank you. Clay, anything you'd like to add? No, I think that that's a succinct statement of the issues, considering that we're filing next week, perhaps the following meeting, we can have a more in-depth conversation of what the settlement agreement contains, because it'll be public at that point. That would be great. And as soon as that is public, if you could make sure you get a link to Mike so that he can send that document directly to the committee members and so that we can... I will do that. Absolutely. We can certainly dive into that well before the meeting. Questions for either Clay or Dan? Anything else you'd like to see? I did have a handout document that I was going to clarify from our last meeting. We've made it more viewable and more accessible, and we have made it available electronically as well. I think some of the key points that we've updated it through Q3 of 2019, and Q3 of 2019 thus far brings us to a total annual combined payments of 5,104,586 dollars and 11 cents. The good news on that is that if you take that for the three quarters and add in the fourth quarter, you will see that calendar year 2019 is very consistent in line with the prior seven years of access funding. So a pretty consistent funding over those years. And as I stated, the spreadsheet is also available to bring you back to 2006 when we first entered the market. When we entered the market, that annual number was roughly 3.5 million dollars and has increased today annually between about 6.8 and 7.2 million dollars. So we think a good news story. And that's available to the group as well. That's all I have. Senator. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Questions from the committee? Just keep in mind, this is Comcast revenue, so it isn't all the cable companies in the state, but it's the predominant one, obviously. There you go. Thanks for that clarification. And I've been on vacation, so basically forgot everything. So these revenues are from taxes or from... It is an assessment on our cable subscribers or cable services. Okay, right. Thank you. Francesca. Francesca would be another way to think about it. Karen, did you have any other questions? No, that's... Okay, wonderful. So at this point, we're gonna move on to the topic of AMO governance operations and budgeting. And next on the agenda is Kevin Christopher from Vermont Access Network. And I think Elizabeth Malone. Wonderful. Northwest Access Executive Director there is joining. Wonderful, you're gonna testify together. Great. Do you hear what's happening? And do you want to hear the presentation? Yeah. Well, we do review and we'll do the cycles. So just these buttons will go up and down. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. I am Kevin Christopher. I'm the Executive Director of Lake Champlain Access TV in Colchester and the President of the Vermont Access Network until May of next year. And I'm Elizabeth Malone and I serve Northwest Access TV in St. Albans, Vermont. Thank you for coming, leave for your time. Thank you for having us. Great. So the presentation we have today answers a few questions that came up at the last meeting and that's where our funding comes from, what informs and who oversees the spending of that funding and who we are accountable on how we make oversight of our funding. I think I know that. So we start by looking at revenue. As you see, this pie chart tells a very clear story. Nearly all of our funding comes from cable peg fees. The remaining about 10% is made up of everything from fundraising from individuals or municipal contributions to underwriting sponsorship. That's the 0% is actually about a half a percent. And the other 4% can be made up from paid production services, class fees, or other smaller sources. But as you see, this funding has really driven how we do our work, which is almost entirely direct services. So pivoting quickly to becoming a fundraising organization like a traditional nonprofit is not really in our purview of where we're at now. So looking at how we spend about $8 million that we receive every year, we have 24 studio locations across the state. And even though we have so many locations, it's still a good hour drive for some of our producers to reach their nearest access center. So as we all know, transportation is an issue in the state. So being as close as possible to truly allow access is really important for the state of Vermont. We have 81 commercial free channels. And that's both, this is where the peg comes in, public, educational, and government access channels. And those are both high definition in some areas and standard definition in the most areas. We also provide about 200 jobs to Vermonters. And this is where the majority of our expenses lie. Over 65% goes directly to employing Vermonters and really serving direct, directly serving the public. So we don't have those folks that other nonprofits would like a fundraising or marketing person. Pretty much every single staff person is directly serving the public. In partnership with the schools, the residents, the nonprofit organizations, and the municipalities of our areas, we provide over 18,000 hours of programming every year. So it's a great partnership that we've built with all of our community members to pull off this much work. And the final number here is a million dollars in equipment that's available to the public. We're kind of like a production library, if you will. In the same way that people go and sign out a book, they can go and sign out the media equipment they need and also get the training that they need to use that equipment. Before we leave that section, questions for Elizabeth on that part? I do. Just thank you, Elizabeth. With regard to the overall funding, I know last week there was some discussion given to charging members of the community for use of facilities. Is that separately in any way put together in a review, perhaps in your annual report or elsewhere? I don't believe that any of us require payment to use our facilities. Some of us have supporting memberships, kind of like Vermont Public Radio or public television does. It's free access to everyone, but we encourage, if the community is able and willing to support our mission, we invite them to do so. But I'm not aware of anyone that requires payment in order to use the facility. Sue, are you trying to get at how much of that $8 million is from? Yeah, from the, we had talked about some local government contributions last, at our last meeting. Yeah, so that's all, that 4% of individual and municipal, no, that's the red piece of the pie. They're individual and municipal contributions together. And you have that as a handout as well. Got it, thank you very much. And the municipal is definitely the larger of that 4%. Okay, and I just had a quick question in terms of, I can make some guesses, but I'd love to know where, where's the high definition capability, is that mostly in the Chittenden area? That's Burlington Telecom, offers them and VTEL. VTEL and Charter, it was part of Charter's most recent CPG, do you, excuse me, Ronnie, Charter's alive on HG, I don't know. Okay. I do AMO's who aren't Charter, who may have HG channels as well. Okay, but the majority do not. Right, okay. Thank you. Okay, I'm just gonna talk a little bit about how we are structured and in relation to that, how we're accountable for the monies that we're getting, primarily from cable subscribers around the state. We are 25 independent and autonomous 501C3s, we reach nonprofits. I believe you all had a sample of mission statements from organizations around the state. They were all a little different, but there are some things I think it will find similar through those, foster free speech. We provide education and tribal community members. We provide a connection to local governments and government transparency. So we're all doing essentially the same thing slightly different ways across Vermont. We're overseed, overseed. Overseed? Overseed by volunteer boards of directors. Those can be organized by geography. They can be organized by cable subscriber numbers in a particular community. They can be organized sometimes by RPE and G, public educational and government. The three types of access. Board members can be appointed by municipal boards or school boards. They can be appointed internally. They can be elected by community members. They can be at large. Some AMO boards have staff members, AMO staff members on the board. The number of members and frequency of meetings can vary a little bit across the state, but we are all meeting at least quarterly with our boards to guide the organizations. The boards, our boards provide accountability in terms of budgeting just like a school board would or a select board. They're part of the budgeting process from drafting the budgets, planning, long-term planning, the approval and then the review as the fiscal year is going on. The, I think we all do this in some way. It can be very different, but we're all doing some sort of community needs assessment in our organization. And that's really what drives our planning, our budgeting and our services to the community. And I'm gonna get into that a little more right now. I have provided a number, there's a link I think that you have with a number of community needs assessments from around the state. This is my organization's community needs assessment. We all approach this a little differently based upon capacity, based upon the funds we have available. They can include things like the surveying, written surveying, online surveying, and person surveying, analysis. I think all of them would include some sort of analysis among board and staff of the needs of the organization. In our most recent community needs assessment, we did a big phone poll with the Castleton Polling Institute, which is where we got most of our good information to kind of guide us through our next five years. Community meetings are a big part. These can be either whole communities, sectors of communities. I know we've, and other organizations have split it up educational communities, government communities, spiritual and religious, which is a big part of the services we provide are to church groups and other spiritual groups. Sometimes we divide those sorts of meetings as well with that P, ENG to kind of get all of our users there. From all, and one-on-one interactions, I think are very important. With our most recent CNA community needs assessment, we had over, I think, two dozen one-on-one interviews where we talked to both existing and potential users about what they wanted from us, what we were doing right, and what we could be doing better to serve our communities. So how does that help hold us accountable? How do our boards hold us accountable? I think there are various processes in place to make sure we're using the monies we receive in the best way possible. It's largely results-based. It's the goals that we set forth in our strategic plans, which are the result of these needs assessments. Are we meeting those goals? Are we providing the communities that we serve with what they indicated that they wanted in those planning processes? There's a community oversight that happens. We should have mentioned that. Our boards of directors, these members come from the communities we serve, almost uniformly across the state. The AMOs are populating their boards with people from their geographic service area. So those are part of the people that we're serving. It's being accountable to those boards and that two-way conversation there between boards and communities and the staffs of these AMOs. Another big part of how we're accountable, especially with the state, are annual reports. So we are required by Rule 8, which is the Public Service Board, now the PUC, rule that governs telecommunications, specifically Rule 8.4 to submit an annual report every year. That goes to our cable operators, be it Comcast or some other cable op. It goes to the PUC, it goes to the Public Service Department and it goes to VAM. So I send mine to myself. And that summarizes budgeting for the previous year, spending for the previous year, peer usage, programming information, anything else that I'm missing in there? Genuine services. Genuine services. Future planning considerations. Future planning, there's a planning consideration part of that that looks out at least three years to what we hope to accomplish. So that is the real piece that is very tangible and is going to these different bodies who are looking at what we're accomplishing, what we're spending, and sometimes asking questions about what we've submitted to them. This is a, Rule 8.4 is somewhat general about the requirements for this reporting. The Vermont Access Network has worked for years on perfecting, might be a strong word, but developing a form so that we can collect uniform data among AMOs. So we all use the same form and submit that each year. I also want to, this is kind of a different way of looking at accountability, but AMO coordination and work that we do together within and without VAN. First of all, there is the VAN board and the organization of the Vermont Access Network. That's fostering accountability with that annual report form. In our participation in regional and national membership groups, I think that's very important so that we are doing our due diligence on a national level, being aware of what's going on in terms of regulation and FCC orders, for example, beyond Vermont. Many of you know this, but we have created something that's been in place for quite a while now called the Vermont Media Exchange. This is a program sharing back channel, if you will. This is the way we're able to, in the old days of mailing on videotapes, this replaces that. This is the way we're able to send our content across the state easily, and that's really been a boom to many of our AMOs, especially the smaller ones, to have a wider variety of content if they're not able to produce as much as they would like to because of their capacity. Certainly we just hit upon this, but our legal and regulatory efforts, Van has been a major driver of that since 2013. We, our members have spent around $300,000 on legal and regulatory efforts, starting with the Charter CPG in 2013 and through Comcast CPG up until this very day when things are still happening. Is that cumulative $300,000 or? Yes. How much is that for a year? Math. $60,000 a year, yeah. And that's, yeah, that hasn't been, it's sort of an all at once kind of prospect. We get there are periods of non-activity and then we're back in the ring there. So that's been a huge part of what Van has been doing for almost a decade now is in those sorts of proceedings. And we're also really fostering collaboration and support that can be things like sharing policies, sharing our HR work, things like that, just being support mechanisms for our fellow executive directors and our staff members across the state. And I mentioned this briefly last meeting but there's, there are two AMOs in Burlington that are in the process of becoming something called the Media Factory. So combining their resources and their knowledge into a single entity to better serve their community as a one-stop media shopping center. Is that it? So any questions on that? Have you found that your legal and regulatory expenses have, have you found that your legal and regulatory expenses have increased over recent years over what they used to be and what will be the reason for that? Yes, we've, well, we've been involved working with Comcast on the CPG renewal for a number of years now. So that's been a lot of those expenses first through the regulatory CPG process and then through what we've been doing in federal court. Okay, and I have one question regarding, you said you have 25 independent autonomous 501C3 organizations and 24 studio locations. So what's the extra one? So those two Burlington organizations that are joining forces as the Media Factory, that's Vermont Community Access Media and the Regional Educational Television Network, they share one studio space. Okay. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Something that was brought up in one of the last meetings was a statewide TV channel. Is that something that would fall under your purview of ban or? Theoretically, yes, I think we would have to petition to be the AMO for such a channel, which has been certainly discussed in a theoretical fashion. And not a priority yet? It's something that's on our horizon. Yeah. Thanks. I wonder, oh, go ahead. Well, maybe the chair should pick. I did call on Clay, so why don't we go play and then to Karen. So you mentioned the Media Factory. Could you talk a little bit about other ways that the AMOs maybe share resources or share costs and if there are any plans to do more sharing in the future as a cost savings measure? Or I guess how to, I guess this is a second question now. Have you guys become lean over the years and kind of become more efficient? Just some examples. I would say we're certainly very lean to begin with. We were talking earlier this week. None of us have. Absolutely, can you slide the mic over? So our staff is incredibly lean. We typically have an executive director at every location and in some places that's the entire staff. It is just an executive director. Doing all the stuff. Yes, but honestly, we are not glorious executive directors. The majority of the executive directors do direct services and we get our hands on cameras pretty regularly. So we're already operating pretty leanly. I think as an organization, Van has grown tremendously and matured and that investment in legal and regulatory work is a real demonstration of that. In the past, the larger of the studios who could afford to pay for that sort of work were involved either individually or in a much smaller collaboration. At this point, Van has grown into a statewide organization that definitely represents and involves both the Hardwick studio that's operating with a very small budget all the way up to some of the larger studios. And I think in addition to the collaboration on legal regulatory, there's often a lot of sharing like Kevin mentioned along policies and things and really making the most out of the resources and not thinking of, well, I'm doing this work for the people of Colchester in this Colchester area. Kevin is very generous about sharing what he's dedicated in funding toward policy development that maybe someone in a smaller studio like Hardwick just simply doesn't have the funding to allocate. Can I just add something there? In terms of economies of scale, I think you spoke about the geographic location of these centers. So it's not easy for us to consolidate expenses because we're serving, I mean, it's almost like the small school issue, right? But it's difficult for us to merge expenses that we have. And there are two reasons. One is geography. The other is the local nature. So if we were to say, let's all buy insurance from one insurance agent, everyone loves their local insurance agent and they're giving business to their local insurance agent. So to say, Bennington and Brattleboro join, find some economy on insurance, it's just not, and it's a common issue with nonprofits. We've looked quite a bit at the question of merging and consolidating resources and it's not as straightforward as it appears. So I think, A, that we're lean, B, that we are serving these unique geographic areas that are hard to consolidate without declining in service. And three, the nature of the services that we buy are very local tend to be. Clay, did you have a follow-up? Yeah, I just had one more question and I think you said it already, I missed it. So BAN is, how is BAN funded again? We're funded almost solely through membership dues. So the AMOs pay dues to BAN, okay, exactly. Karen? So I wonder if you have a sense of whether you're more regulated in Vermont than similar networks in other states and that would contribute to your costs more or less regulated? I think we actually benefit because, unlike many other states, we're regulated on the state level as opposed to each municipality. So the CPG applies to the entire state of Vermont as opposed to I having to go and negotiate with the town of St. Albans, say, and Kevin having to go negotiate in the town of Colchester. It's a more predictable regulation, which is beneficial. Yeah. And keep in mind the CPG is once every 11 years. So we really marshal our legal expenses for that decade event that happens once a decade. This one has been protracted, this most recent one, but that's unusual. But since the 90s, BAN members have pulled their resources to negotiate together with the prevailing cable operators. Just a couple of questions. Kevin and Elizabeth, thank you very much for the presentation this morning. I know when I presented, I talked a little bit about the nearly doubling of funding made available to the AMOs over the last decade. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to that or if maybe you need some time to follow up in providing us some data. And during that tenure, how the 200 employee count might have changed and what the additional funding might have gone to and how it was spent. As far as employee count, I think we would go back and do some research, look at our previous annual reports. Just for the sake of time, I think what would be useful is if you can get us that information and then you can submit it to the committee and then we can post it online. Just because I think it is an important question and I just wanna make sure I'm keeping us on track today. So why don't you give them now publicly other information that you'd like them to gather for us so that we all hear that and then we can have you do that over the next week or so and then get that back to us. Great, just some detail on how the, since the funding has changed, however the last decade, the provision of services have changed, whether it be with regard to employee count, whether it be to, because my analysis, my quick math, and I wasn't very good at it, but my quick math of the 81 channels and 18,000 hours comes to roughly 0.6 hour per channel per day. So if you could speak to that with regard to how our original programming might have changed over that decade as well, I think that might be helpful to the organization, to this group. And then just two other follow-up matters here. Also, if you could include in that as well, I know in your annual reports, you give balance sheets and perhaps some maybe cutting from the annual reports, some direct data on savings or cash on hand by the AMOs that maybe may exist in CD forms or investments or other nature so that we could have access to that information. And then one, two additional questions, one you might be able to comment on here this morning. I know you spoke to the annual reports. I'm just curious if you can speak to, I know that the vast majority of members to my knowledge are able to file that annual report on time. Do you have experience as to whether some members might not be able to file that? If they do not file it, are there parameters in place that can assist to getting that annual report filed? I know there was, there have been historically issues of AMOs wanting to provide nine nineties with the annual report. We did, as you know, we were able to change the due date from 120 to 150 days after the end of the fiscal year to help in that. I think there might be very AMO specific reasons that we could talk to AMOs if we have an AMO in mind that we're waiting for. But I think in general, that would be probably a case-by-case basis of what's going on at that center. Again, thank you both. Senator, that's all my questions. Wonderful. Thank you. I have a question that has to do with penetration. So primarily the AMOs broadcast via cable, right? By cable and via our websites. And via the websites, so over the internet. So in areas like the Northeast Kingdom and other rural areas where there isn't a whole lot of broadband, that hampers your ability of citizens to actually see what you're producing, right? Yes. Does a single come over DSL very well? I mean, what kind of speeds do you need in terms of broadband in order to really stream your- I think it probably depends on the platform that you're using to host the videos. A lot of platforms have gotten very good about being able to read the speed at which the videos are being downloaded. So depending on the flexibility of the platform, it may or may not be as good as you would hope, I guess. Speaking personally, our website, if you're watching and you have a slur connection, there's a high-quality file or a low-quality file available. Automatically, you'll stream that low-quality file. Okay. Do you get any feedback from people like in rural areas that can't access your stuff? I do quite often, yes, because we're serving, other than Colchester and Milton, I'm serving a wildly rural area and there's not a lot of cable penetration. And so I'm hearing a lot, why can't we get you? Why can't we see you? I think the more common feedback that I hear in the rural areas is people do not have cable as opposed to, or do not have access to cable as opposed to do not have internet. It's always very welcome when we do make videos available online because the availability of cable is lower than the availability of internet. So certainly in rural communities, access to the internet is extremely important for this. And, okay, basically that's it. Lauren, Glenn, did you have something else? No. Okay, yeah, Clay. Thank you. I just wanted to go back to one question about regulation and just kind of get some clarity on what exactly you mean by regulation. I think the PUC does regular cable companies and there is in the cable rules general obligations of AMOs, but to what extent are the AMOs themselves actually regulated by the PUC in that does the PUC call you to a hearing to examine costs or your performance or things that the PUC might do with say another public utility like electricity or telecommunications or something like that. Is there, in your opinion, is there a difference or a commonality with how the PUC is set up to regulate other entities? I know I can't speak about other utilities. This is kind of what I, this has been my career in telecommunications, but I think we'd all welcome that honestly. And we always turn in our annual reports and we typically do not hear any feedback. So we usually, most of us are enjoy our work and are happy to talk about what we do to serve the community. No, I just wanted to, can I get that out there that we don't actually specifically regulate AMOs and I'm not asking that we do that necessarily. This is an important aspect of the conversation. This is an important distinction to be made in the CPG process that's really the cable company that's being regulated. And the AMOs are a party to that in that they are either a beneficiary or they could be harmed by decisions that the PUC makes but the PUC isn't necessarily regulating the AMO specifically. Just to make a connection to that, the budget that you were talking about or the amount of funding spent on regulatory participation was mostly related to the cable CPGs not to your own needs to go before the Public Utility Commission, right? Okay. So that kind of flows onto what you were saying. Yeah, that's where I was trying to get into that. So the funding source pie chart that you had, have you looked at other funding opportunities and sources like grants and what that would mean for your organization? You mentioned briefly that you don't have development staff. And so it seems to me that that would be a big change and a big investment. So I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more to that work that's been done to diversify revenue? Yes. And then also what the limitations are. Yeah, I would say starting with your first point about grants, we are a curious animal. I mean, yes, we're a nonprofit organization but I've been applying for a lot of grants between this year and last year to try and offset some losses. And it's very hard. Like typically we try and shoehorn ourselves into the line of something like an educational grant. Like we just got a grant from the building and general services through their building communities grant program. And we fit into the educational model. But clearly we're not a purely an educational organization. So grants can be depending on what they're specifically named at it can be a little tough of a fit because we're really not a traditional or a widespread form of nonprofits. People are really working hard to do things like Dan mentioned about asking people to contribute to become supporting members. You know, as we look ahead to trends of things like cord cutting, we're asking for support from the community. And that's also why we're going to the municipalities that we serve as well. And some people have long running contracts with some of their costs are offset. But more of us are going to towns and asking for a little more to help us cover those expenses of covering all those meetings. So that's a few of the ways that we've started to do it. It's certainly been a discussion at every single conference that's been held with media organizations in the last few years as talking about how to diversify in order to prepare us for cord cutting and more potentially drastic changes like the FCC order. And is that, so that's broader than just Vermont, those discussions and seeing what's going on in other states and jurisdictions? Yeah, absolutely. And we'll talk more of that towards the end of today when we really get into a deeper discussion about alternative revenue models. So this isn't our only opportunity to do that. Any final comments that you, well, not final because you're here every time and I appreciate that. But for today, anything else we need to know. I just want to say thank you for your time and attention to this issue. I think it really speaks volumes to what our role is in the state. So thank you. Thank you for coming. Great. So I need to speak briefly with legislative council staff. So I'm going to propose that we just take a quick three minute break stretch, get a drink, go to the bathroom, meet you right back here. Thank you. The next thing that we're going to be talking about are fees on... Internet service. Yes, fees on internet service providers and we have on the phone, Peter Blum. Is that correct? Are you still there with us? Okay, we're going to put a microphone to the speakerphone so that we might be able to hear you better. Thank you so much for joining us. You're welcome. Madam Chair, I have the opportunity to speak today. The comments I prepared relate primarily to the history and legal structure of the Vermont Universal Service Fund as well as the prospects for fine and additional financial support for community peg systems with particular reference to broadband services. I plan to be reading prepared comments which you do not have, but which I will file later if you wish. And I'm also aware that it's now about 1120 and you have a scheduled adjournment in 1230. I have about 11 pages that are prepared and I could give you some reading for how much time you'd like me to spend. I could either read, you know carefully, I could skim or I could just skip to the end and how much time you want to allocate. I would like to give you about a half hour. Okay, I think we can do that. I think I'll just start reading then and try to pace myself. Okay. Thank you. First let me just introduce myself briefly. I lived in Vermont for 35 years. Don't get any more in the best shoes. It's very nice to be able to work with you. So Peter, Peter, I'm going to have you to stop for a moment. We're having some technical difficulties hearing you on this end. So if you'll just sit tight for a moment, we're going to try to figure out how to make this a little bit more audible. Could we lower the volume? So Peter, I actually, we're in a big- Some of them said it's coming in quite distorted to me too when you speak. So I don't know if the volume is too high or not. Yes, we're going to try lowering the volume. So I'm going to lower our volume and if you're on a speakerphone, please pick up and speak directly into the phone. Okay, is that better? Can you speak a little more? Go ahead, Peter, say a few things. All right, testing, testing. I'll just, I'll start until you interrupt me again and then I'll stop. I worked for the Legislative Council as a young person for about 10 years. I worked for Governor Cunin as Deputy Secretary of Administration and then most of my career was at the Public Service Board. How's this going? Is it all right? It's better. It's not great. It's still a bit loud. Oh, a little bit away, yes. Okay, we just... I wonder if I should, would it be better for you if I just filed my comments and then we could walk another time? No, it's better now. It's better, okay. All right, anyway, during my time at Public Service Board, I worked on Telecom Matters and I testified in the legislature frequently and I drafted the bill that became in 1994 and became the Vermont Universal Service Fund and I managed that fund for about a decade. After retiring from Vermont State Employment about 10 years ago or 12 years ago now, actually, I worked for the National Regulatory Research Institute and I later have worked as a consultant in Telecom with a range of clients including state utility commissions, public advocates, and even a small telephone company in the Mid-Less. So the first topic I'd like to talk about is Universal Service Historically. The concept dates back to the early part of the 20th century when rural areas of the country were unable to get either electricity or telephone. Vermont worked hard in cooperation with federal agencies to solve this problem. It created Velco and it allowed municipal electric companies to cooperate to form co-ops. But Vermont's efforts to expand telephone service were not quite as aggressive. Instead, the FCC pulled most of the load in helping to get costly service into rural areas. Until the 1990s, the chief support for Universal Telephone Service looked at the form of implicit transfers, their loads from regulator set rates, monthly rates for local service were set low and were nearly the same, or were the same in cities and in the countryside. The costs were vastly different, however. So the regulators increased other charges. Business rates were higher than residential, total usage rates were very high. Many people criticized these policies as implicit subsidies from urban areas to rural areas. In the 1990s, these subsidies looked vulnerable to competition and there was an effort to replace these pricing mechanisms with so-called explicit mechanisms, consisting of support payments. Vermont also took several important initiatives to enhance Universal Service. First, we adopted a lifeline program that was funded by having the Vermont Telephone Company's pool of subsidy monies and using an industry-wide pool. In the 1990s, as the local exchange competition was coming and cross-hub cities between urban and rural areas looked doomed, it seemed that there was a, if it was creamed with scams, so to speak, in Burlington and Rutland in the form of above-cost rates, it would increasingly go to the new competitors and incumbent characters would no longer be able to overcharge some customers for the benefit of others who impose higher costs. The 1994 Vermont Universal Service Fund statute thus created a system of explicit universal service charges and authorized distributions, primarily aimed at reducing rainy and service disparities that disadvantage the state's many rural customers. The Vermont legislature has recently adjusted that system by passing Act 79, which increased the BUSF charge and created some new spending programs. But Vermont's BUSF law is 25 years old. In the intervening years, telecommunications technology has changed dramatically. Cell phones are one big change. Cellulite is now a far-equipped landline service. Many households with both services available have even terminated their landlines. Fortunately, cellular companies contribute to the BUSF just as do wireline companies and as an even more dramatic development. 1994 internet service was almost entirely provided and by a lot of service over the telephone network and it was slow. You may remember you got mail from American Online. Broadband service was something that big companies bought at a great cost from the telephone company in the form of special access service. Universal service problem persists today even after these changes. The problem still is that it costs a lot of string cables to houses in rural areas that are widely separated. It doesn't matter whether those cables are copper pairs or wire or fiberglass strands. The average distance between customers is still the most compelling variable. And now Peg's funding has been added to the problem as well. Like E911 and rural network deployment, Peg has yet another communications related program which is an eroded funding base to do in part to ever increasing usage for broadband. My next comments relates to the two legal structures that I think are important on background. I agree with the Vermont Access Network memo already in your record that telecommunications policy historically has comprised a mixture of benefits and burdens. The benefits have included the right to use public ways, full attachment rights, and exemption from antitrust laws. The obligations have been many, but have often included unique and intrusive regulatory systems and unique taxation burdens. Those obligations also classically included the obligation to extend existing lines to use the certain areas, the so-called carry of last resort obligation. Later we added the duty to pay the DUSF surcharge to a revenue stream devoted to promoting benefits in the telecommunications space. One key decision made in 1994 by the Vermont legislature was that since the DUSF would support programs that benefited both intrastate and interstate telephone service, both of those services would be surcharged equally. This decision intended to secure the benefit in the fairest possible way and also created a legal risk. The legal fiction of intrastate and interstate is almost as old as the telephone itself. Intrastate telecommunications were mainly the calls that originated and terminated in a single state, interstate calls across state lines. Telephone companies had to live in both worlds at this greatly complicated rate setting. The division worked because calls were the unit of nearly all communications and for billing purposes the network kept track of where each call originated and terminated. Telephone companies were treated as dual entities, each with two revenue streams and two separate sets of costs. The states and the FCC each tried to avoid intruding by setting rates only within their own regulatory, quote, jurisdiction. There's very little equipment or traffic in the telecommunications network that one can fairly characterize as inherently intrastate or interstate. The reason is primarily technology. Digital packets, the digital packet has replaced the call as the basic unit on a network and nobody tracks or wants to track where these packets originated or terminated. Nevertheless, the jurisdictional fiction still powerfully entered influences regulatory policy and specifically universal service. For example, federal USF charges apply only to quote, interstate telecommunications and the FCC asserts broad jurisdictional power over those interstate telecommunications. Thus what is interstate and virtually no surviving technological significance but it is still legally paramount, especially as a rationale for federal preemption of state regulation and even of state taxes. And I wanna talk about the internet tax freedom act. There is no VUSF surcharge on broadband. This may have made sense 25 years ago when the internet was still a young technology needing shelter. By contrast, today's broadband service is the dominant stream. It carries both voice, telephone and video as near applications. But for monitors today are paying for extra broadband deployment under a telephone surcharge that was designed 25 years ago before many people even knew what the word broadband meant. And broadband is a large market to overlook. Most customers even in Vermont have broadband available at their location and most subscribed. My own cable provider charges me 150% more for my internet service than for my telephone service. Moreover, customers increasingly are cutting their cable service and rely on internet video streaming and posing substantial charges on only a portion of the market and create competitive distortions over time. Moreover, such a system can be unfair, especially the poor or elderly customers who may be unable to afford broadband but who still need telephones. In sum, broadband has become the key telecommunications goal for the 21st century and the broadband go out now lags the telephone tail. Broadband has also begun to affect cable television revenues as more and more customers terminate their traditional video subscriptions and will lie instead on internet streaming from companies like Hulu and Netflix. I recommend below several options that might allow increased peg funding by equaling charges on broadband. Before offering them however, I want to discuss the terms of the internet tax freedom act, which is a possible barrier to any such step. The basic provisions of the ITFA is to prohibit state and local taxes on internet access. This today includes broadband access, although originally it meant such dial-up services in America online. The ITFA was first enacted in 1998 as a temporary moratorium but it has now become a permanent feature of federal law. The ITFA has four exceptions, which I want to mention here. First, there's a broad grandfather's warrant that protects the existing DUSF. It exempts from the federal act all state federal, all state universal service funds in effect on February 8th, 1996. Vermont's DUSF surcharge was initially imposed before this date, but it has never applied to internet access. Thus the exemption is likely a little value to current Vermont law. If Vermont were to amend the DUSF to include broadband, I think the courts would like to hold that Vermont had dissolved whatever grandfather protection had made benefit from today. Another exemption is benefit fees. This is a fee imposed for a, quote, specific privilege service or benefit. As was discussed in the DIN memo in your record, this is the basis on which the Oregon Supreme Court held the license fee in Eugene, Oregon. The court held that this fee was not preempted by the ITFA because it was a fee entitling the cable company to use the city's rights of way. Under this model, a fee could be imposed on broadband providers other than utilities. Peter? Who used the public? Can you ask him what he did? And other utilities. Peter? Who used the public rights of way. Yes. Peter, can you pause for a second? Can you just tell who's asking the question? Sorry, I can't. Yeah. Could you go closer to the microphone? I'm getting a lot of echo and it's hard to understand what you're saying. Okay. Can you hear me now? Speak right now. Yeah, pretty well. Oh, I didn't know if the microphone was... Okay, this is Andrea Papiti. I am an analyst for the commission. And I just had a question if you could clarify, because I'm still having a hard time hearing you. Sorry, I'm terribly sorry, but there's so much echo that I can't understand what you're saying. That's okay, but could you... That mic is going to go. Oh, that mic is going to go. Yeah, here you go, right here. Should I put it here? She just does that, that he'll hear her better. Can you hear me now? Is that better? Oh, that's way, way better. Yeah. So you were mentioning Oregon and how there was a fee that was found to be okay, but I'm not sure what that was actually called and what it actually did. I just kind of heard a little bit of what you were saying. So just so I can... Yeah, I'm not sure that I can tell you much without further research, but the case involved a city franchise of a cable company and the city decided that it wanted to impose a charge the right of the use of the city's rights away. And I don't know is whether it also applied to telephone companies or electric companies or just to this one litigant. But the reason I mentioned it was that it was using this exemption in the ITFA and upholding the fee. So I guess to answer in any more detail, I would need to go back and just want to research. Okay. Did you have a follow-up? Should I continue? No, it's actually on Lawrence M.O. So we have another reference to it somewhere else. So please continue. Thank you. I do have a follow-up too. All right. If you're going to provide some data to that, sir, if you would not mind also speaking to the federal cap with regard to franchise fees and how they were implicated in that particular case. Well, I'm not sure if I am going to provide additional data, but we can talk about it later. Like something further from me. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So just to continue with my presentation then. The fee could be provided on, it could be imposed on broadband providers and as well as other utilities who use public rights away. There are several legal issues with this approach, however, including the terms of existing cable franchises and implications for various forms of property taxation. And I do not offer any opinions here on those issues. The third major exemption I want to discuss in ITFA is at the tail end of ITFA. And it is the 9-1-1 charges exemption. And I have sent a handout to you, which has that text. I hope you have that before you begin. We have that in front of us. Nothing in the fact bracket. Okay. So the only limitation here is that the funds of other ways must be expended only for that purpose. And as you may know, some but not all current USF proceeds are used for E-9-1-1 purposes. Actually, I think a majority are. Therefore, if you were to revise the statute, so long as the 9-1-1 portion of the broadband access charge was separately imposed and deposited into a special fund used only for E-9-1-1, the statute would continue to exempt that surcharge from ITFA. The fourth and most complex by far exemption in ITFA is the Universal Service Prevention. It applies to all state universal service funds co-authorized by section 254 of the Communications Act, which was the 1996 Telecom Act. And that's in your handout also. It begins with the word state authority. Oh, I'm sorry. No, it's just a short thing. And it refers to subsection F of 254 of the 1996 act, which is also in your handout, which is a longer portion, beginning with the word state authority. And I think the copy you have, I italicized and underlined several phrases that are particularly problematic and because they're so vague. Because it's so complex and vague, there are many avenues for a legal challenge. And it is even more complex maybe than a piece of the first light because Vermont may or may not be free to define terms for its own purposes, terms such as telecommunications. The statute requires telecommunications carriers that provide interest intrastate telecommunications service to pay USF charges to the state. Those charges must be equitable and discriminatory, a non-discriminatory, a standard that is open to wide interpretation. Historically, section 254 F has been interpreted by the courts narrowly to mean that the states can impose a USF surcharge on intrastate service and therefore not on intrastate service. The two sounds look similar. I can hardly tell myself which one I said. Fortunately, Vermont avoided the challenge to its current USF statutes because Vermont's USF is an exercise of its sovereign taxing power and is not delegated authority under section 254. Vermont's USF statutes was modeled on a Supreme Court decision that was decided about five years before the law passed and that Supreme Court decision upheld in Illinois telecommunications sales tax. The statute creates authority only to collect funds from certain telecommunications carriers. Under recent FCC decisions, broadband access provided neither provide telecommunication services nor are they carriers. So state laws must be not inconsistent with FCC rules. I'm not aware of any FCC formal rules on the question of imposing state USF charges on internet access. Nevertheless, as discussed below, the FCC has seemingly signaled their intention to do just that in an appropriate case. The statute also allows for states to provide additional definitions and standards to preserve and advance universal service. This language is obscure, but in context it is understood to authorize additional supplemental state USF funds. Regrettably, and from my point of view, this delegated power is subject to two important limitations. One, it has to be specific, predictable and sufficient mechanisms. And two, they must not rely on federal universal service support mechanisms or burden them. Federal courts have repeatedly overturned state efforts to broaden the base for their universal service programs using a variety of rationales based in the statute. In 2004, federal court invalidated Texas' effort to include interstate revenues in its universal service base because it failed to be equitable and non-discriminatory. Another federal court invalidated Oregon's effort on the grounds that a state universal service fund surcharge burdened federal universal service mechanisms. Linus Supreme Court has taken an office review, however. The last statute has never been challenged on the basis of section 254F, even though we surcharge interstate telecommunications. Possibly this is because it was drafted to emulate the Illinois Telecommunications Sales Tax Law, which had been appalled by the Supreme Court in 1989. And now I know my time is almost up. I now wanna talk to three options that I wanna present to you. And I'll try to finish in five minutes if that's okay, Madam Chair. That would be wonderful. I was just about to give you the five minute warning. So you're right on target. Okay, okay. So three options. One is add broadband to the USF base. This is an obvious choice. It would reduce competitive distortions and it would help poor people who have phones but no broadband. It is also, I think, consistent with the 10 of the 1994 legislature, which insisted that all telecommunications, not just interest rates should contribute to the USF. I think it raises considerable litigation risk, however. I discussed above earlier the traditional legal fiction that divides telecommunications regulatory jurisdiction into intrastate and interstate regimes. The FCC has repeatedly insisted that broadband is exclusively interstate for purposes of regulation. This policy not only precludes regulation of rates in terms of service for broadband, but in its arrogance, the FCC also supposes that it has control over which state and local taxes may be applied to interstate traffic. In a 2015 decision, the FCC said in paragraph 400 and something, text that you have in the handout. I think it's on page two of your handout. Predicting that even though they don't have the rules prohibiting states from doing this, they would likely preempt. So, this decision was issued in 2015 during the Obama administration and much of that order has been reversed subsequently under the Trump administration, but not the above prediction. It is widely believed that the FCC would still, still subscribes to this policy and would quickly seek to preempt any state effort to subject broadband revenues to state universal service charges. By the way, this is a change from, I think I, Mr. Antopka, I think you and I may have spoken in February. I had the opposite opinion. So, I've changed my mind about this since we spoke last last winter. The last clause that I gave you, so Jeff, yeah. Peter, my, this is Representative Intosca. Could you clarify then what your position is? Is your position that it likely would not succeed if there were a challenge? Or is your position the other way? Yeah, I'm about to do that. But yeah, I think there's substantial litigation risk. If the FCC were to preempt the state from imposing USS charges on broadband access, I think the legal outcome is in some doubt. Nevertheless, if Vermont were to go down this path, even though you have a chance for success, FCC preemption is highly likely, and the ultimate success would depend on the outcome of a long and costly appeal. Does that answer your question? Yes, thank you. That's what you stated in your handout, in your longer edition handout, right? I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. That was what you stated in your longer edition handout in a footnote, I think. Well, in my handout, I gave you the FCC quote, and what I just said is in the prepared remarks that I've made, which I will be glad to file with you, if you'd like. That would be wonderful. It is, I know we're all concentrating very hard on your words, and I can tell because most people in the room have their eyes closed so they can focus on the sound. So, myself included. So, if you could submit them in writing, I know that would be very helpful. All right, sure. You don't have to be snoring, is there? No, I'm not hearing no snores. Okay, the second option is to broaden the sales tax. The suggestion is to abandon the USF model entirely and apply the sales tax to telecommunications, including broadband. The current USF surcharge in funding programs would be merged into the state's general tax structure and BF's USF programs would be funded from the general fund using the normal appropriations process. I make this suggestion sorrowfully. First, because it's a huge change in the state law. And second, because it's an admission or final defeat for one of the original objectives of 1994 law, which I was involved with. That law was passed at a time when the telephone industry provided many cross subsidies in which one customer helped another. The VOSF was a state program, but we try to keep the system of implicit subsidies as far out of the budget as we could and as similar to the pre-existing conditions as possible. We wanted to maintain the system by which the telephone industry continued to raise funds and continue to see them spent only on telephone network benefits. But that goal has been frustrated in large and small ways subsequently. First, the accountant decided not understanding the language that the legislature had passed the VOSF, the state funds and belong to the state accounting system. I'll skip the intervening chapters, but the big disappointment now for me is that the VOSF spending provides benefits across the telecommunications network, primarily broadband, and it can raise funds only from a small portion of that network. The pair was paying for the whole blog, in other words. If the sale tax been overcome, this can broaden the base to all retail telecommunications built in Vermont. That would be a way to restore the original objective. My third option is to, is widely understood to avoid the problem the FCC's claim intention to preempt any state VOSF charges on broadband. I think the FCC is endlessly clever in finding ways to expand its own jurisdiction, but I accept the common wisdom that connection charges stand a good chance of avoiding a preemption effort. The method is to stop looking at revenue from telecommunications service and focus instead on the wires in other facilities used to provide that service. In most cases, they are the monthly or yearly charge quote per connection. A connection would be a telephone line or a broadband line. The line that provides both might be one or two connections as you choose. Connection plans are not ideal because some connections have data rates thousands of times faster than new household BFL or cable modern services. So any connection plan should consider whether all connections are equal and if not, how to charge for the fast ones. A recent study by the National Regulatory Research Institute indicates that connection charges for universal service purposes have been instituted in Maine, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Utah. Maine has imposed a fee of 21 cents per line or telephone number per month with a limit of 25 lines per account being billable for its telecommunications education access fund, a parallel to being considered for the state of the USF. Nebraska has applied a flat rate per connection charge of $1.75 per year to each residential line and small business line. Meanwhile, large customers will continue at least for the moment, excuse me, for the moment to pay out percentage of revenue basis. Mexico responding to a continuing decline in interest state telecommunications revenues has prescribed a new connection charge of $1.24 per year per quote, communications connection. And last, Utah has imposed a charge of 60 cents per month for access line. That concludes my remarks, Madam Chair. Thank you for the chance to speak with your committee. Mr. Blum, thank you so much. I know this was not ideal circumstances, but we very much appreciate your time and your testimony. And we look forward to reading the comments that you'll submit. You can send those to Mike Farrant. It's on the website for the committee. It has the email address there. And again, thank you. I've been working with Mike Ferrant. Can I just send it to Mike? Yes, exactly. Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you and good bye. Okay, thank you. I think it doesn't make a lot of sense to keep him on the line to ask and answer questions since we're all, I think, on the verge of a migraine. But it's certainly useful to have that 40,000 foot view, at least for me, to get a sense of where we're at as we launch into the next big part of our discussion, which is on alternative revenue models. And I'm going to turn it over to Lauren Glenn at this point. So, Peter's paper is actually referred to in the memo that I sent you. And I will, what I'd like to do is just call your attention to the memo that I sent you, and then I'm gonna take up some of the alternative funding ideas that are contained in them. Just to say about this memo, the first few pages are meant to recap some of the discussions that we've had about the nature of US telecommunications and media regulations, so that's page four. US communications policy is based on an exchange of public benefit for commercial access to the public rights of way. So there's a little summary there that we talked about last meeting. And then we, on the next page five, talks about the value of PEG, which we have talked about today and previously. Yep, yep. And then page seven, item four really talks about how we have started to focus on that PEG is distributed on the internet, not just on cable, and so we wanted to start to look at the internet as a possible revenue source for, and given that there is no public benefit requirements from title one internet, according to the FCC. So that has been a curiosity of this committee, which is what's led to this conversation today. On page eight, there are links to the different ways that the FCC is foreclosing on the state's authority to require public benefit in exchange for the use of the rights of way. And on the bottom of that is the paper that the presentation that Peter gave in February to the, I think it was Senate Finance. And a lot of what he talked about today is included in that, the first half. But what he did was he went back and he looked at the constraints on state authority. And so, here I get to the meat of the presentation. So there are a number of ways that local authorities tax or collect fees from telecommunication carriers. And what's really interesting on page 10 is a recap by a company, a telecommunications company called Mitel, if you go to their website, and they say, here are all the taxes and fees that we pay to the states and localities. And it's really quite impressive, the contribution that these companies and their rate payers make to the public coffers. And this is a handful of them. So just at a very high level on page 10, and we could, maybe Rob, can you just scroll to page 10 on that presentation? So just very high level and then we'll drill down. There are communications taxes. There are franchise fees as we've discussed for cable. There are sales taxes, district taxes, excise taxes, utility user taxes, and telecommunications kinds of fees and taxes. So on a very high level, states and localities are, and the federal government is pretty creative in how it accrues value from these firms, as well as rides and theater tickets and anything that is amusement in the city of Chicago. And it recently applied this tax to online entertainments and amusements. And under that would be your Netflix, your online gaming. And so this sales tax is applied at the point of purchase. Now this has been contested. There's obviously pros and cons. Most recently there's been a suit against this application of the tax. But I just, again, I'm gonna kind of go quickly, but I think it's an interesting example of a kind of sales tax that is on the consumption of amusements and entertainments. Yeah. I was gonna ask a question about that. Sure. You say on the providers, is this a tax that's levied against Netflix or purchasers of Netflix services? Can it be passed down to the consumer in these examples? I believe in this case, that it is the consumer pays it at point of purchase and then Netflix has to pay it to the city. Thank you. So this will apply only to entertainment over the internet that you pay for. Right. So it applies to a whole series of entertainments, but this- You can't get free programs. Yeah, this is for an entertainment that you purchase. So you would pay a sales tax on it. So I think it works like when you buy something on Amazon and the sales tax is applied based on the percentage for the locality that you're in and then they are responsible for paying that back to the state. And again, I just wanted to say this is not without controversy, right? None of these actually are. There is also just to add to this, in Massachusetts, there is a bill along these lines to implement a sales tax on online entertainment designed to give 20% to the state, 40% to the local government and 40% to the local peg channels. So there's a link to that legislation there. It's been recently introduced. I think the prognosis, I mean, they're gonna move ahead with moving this forward. I think some people say it won't happen. Some people say it could happen. We don't know yet. But that's an interesting solution from the peg community. In Minnesota, there is a heritage tax. Again, this is a kind of sales tax, but there was a coalition of arts organizations and outdoors education, outdoor hunting, fishing, sort of organizations that came together and were successful in adding a half a percent to preserve Minnesota heritage. It's also written into the Constitution, which is interesting. It cannot be vetoed or swept into the general fund. And it generates, obviously, a much bigger state, $150 million a year to fund wildlife conservation and the preservation of arts and culture. These are distributed through grants, and so peg access are among many nonprofits that apply to use these funds. So it's an interesting twist on the sales tax and an interesting coalition that brought that together. Then we move into the realm of telecommunications tax, and the caveat is I am not a telecommunications lawyer. I am a researcher, but there are some examples here. Massachusetts has a sales tax on telecommunications. In Eugene, Oregon, there has been a telecom tax. Of course, the recent FCC ruling was aimed, FCC ruling applying to in-kind payments of cable operators towards public benefits, and the FCC really was very focused on Eugene's tax and the Oregon court decision that upheld it. And the FCC said, there's a quote here at the bottom, to address this problem, this is the FCC speaking, expressly preempt any state or local requirement, whether or not imposed by a franchising authority that would impose obligations on franchise cable operators beyond what Title VI allows. So I think Dan actually would be more expert in discussing the pros and cons of this, but this is an example of a telecommunications tax, which again is not without its, it's fraught. It's, I think as Peter said, it faces litigation risks. The next example that we came up with, which is an interesting one, is spectrum proceeds. And I know that that has been a topic of discussion in the legislature and a little bit of a sore spot for Vermont Public Television. The board is currently discussing how it will expend the proceeds of the sale of Vermont spectrum. And, but in Philadelphia, the public television outfit decide to sell all its channels and to achieve its mission in a different way by generating $135 million and distributing it through grants to foster free speech, diversity of ideas, free expression, et cetera. So Holly Groeschner is willing to come in and talk more about it. I'm not sure it actually has legs as a source of revenue for PEG, but it certainly is a way that the state is going to be funding public benefit media. So those are the things that have happened that are in play and it certainly is not an exhaustive list, but it might be worth us discussing if we wanna go down any of these roads and thinking about it. The next section here are about emerging policy ideas. So these are ideas that are not yet fully in play but are being talked about. The Massachusetts legislature has a bill under consideration to look at the state's news deserts and how to solve that issue. So that's at a study stage, but this idea of news deserts is one that's gaining currency just like food deserts have been and how to address the gaps in news and information in areas where local newspapers have closed and there are no local alternatives. I think that it's pretty, it's safe to say that PEG access is one answer to local news deserts. It is debatable whether Vermont has big news deserts but it is a core idea that's gaining currency. And then this idea of community information districts. So along the lines, I think Karen's gonna talk a little bit about local municipalities creating tax districts themselves and this idea, which is not yet, yeah, I think in New Jersey it's gaining some momentum, but as of right now it's an idea about creating information districts that have some taxing authority to generate revenue to support local media. And then this last one, I think has less applicability for the legislature but just as an interest, it's interesting because it's research done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas about how to address digital divide and diversity of ideas, et cetera, using the CRA as a mechanism but as we know the CRA tends to be implemented on a bank by bank basis. It's not kind of a big statewide initiative but I think that that report itself adds some legitimacy to thinking about the use of community-based resources to address disparities in distribution of the internet and distribution of news and information. So this is really meant to generate discussion and thought about ways that we might want to pursue this and research that we might need some help with from the Ledge Council to talk about some more. Thank you. Questions for Laura Glenn before we move on to Karen. I do have one comment with respect to the tax on the right-of-way, and I'm not a lawyer but it just seems to me that the state and the municipalities own the right-of-way and what federal government gets to tell you what you can charge for rent, it's not really a tax. I mean, I would characterize this as rents for use of the right-of-way that's owned by the state and the localities. What page are you on here? That was on, that's on page 13 at the bottom and it talks about the FCC's report or they did the court decision. Okay. So like, where did they get, excuse me. No, I'm sorry. Where did they get off? Expressly preempting state or local governments. That's the state's right decision. It seems to me, anyway. The research, again, I think Clay would have more to say about this but the research that I've done on the state's right-of-way lease and rent, so the Agency of Transportation makes deals with private entities that want to use state property and they create lease arrangements or rent arrangements. Those arrangements go into a fund, those funds go into a fund that are used for transportation purposes and both in that case and in the case of pole attachments and the rent that is charged for pole attachments by Greenmount Power and other electric companies, there seem to be restrictions on those entities' ability to charge anything more than the cost of maintenance. There seem to be prohibitions on the ability to add extra fees for public benefit uses over and above the cost of actually managing the physical right-of-way. So you may be able to add to that but there doesn't seem to be a lot of latitude that we have to pile on to what is currently being accrued from the direct use of the right-of-way without a policy discussion. Right. And I would, sorry. I would just say that there is some risk there because in our broadband discussion this last session, you don't want to actually discourage the deployment of broadband service to rural areas where it's not happening now. So there's a balance there, but it just kind of strikes me. Did you want to? Yeah, just to say that I think AOT restrictions on or requirements for what they charge, the use of the right-of-way comes from federal funding obligations and federal highway rules about how states manage right-of-way that receive federal funding. Whether they're controlled by the federal government or not, if they receive federal funding, that's kind of the, has been the federal hook for putting obligations on states or restrictions on what states can do with their right-of-way. And that's not to say we couldn't look into it more. I think that's really where we are today. Right, and just to finish, I think that, I know it was hard to hear Peter, but I think the most important thing that he said were the last two things, which was the potential to broaden the sales tax. So I think what he was proposing is rather than having, is to look at how the Universal Service Fund is collected and that may no longer actually be serving us. He said the tail's wagging the dog and to maybe look instead at a sales tax that's on the use of telecommunications. And then this idea of connection charges, which focuses on the wires and not the service itself. And there are some good examples. He sent me that paper. I think he could also, may have sent it to Mike, where the main Nebraska, Utah and New Mexico examples are included. So I think that I would not lose that thought. I think that was an important contribution he made to the discussion. Just, did I have two comments on that? So I think that we should look at those and we should have an open discussion on them. The question that I would have is whether or not this has been looked at or I think the word is called scored from what the functional equivalent of the Department of Revenue or Taxes to speak to a little bit of that going forward. And then with regard to the connection plan, I don't know the answer to this, but perhaps we can dig into it regarding Maine, Nebraska, New Mexico and Utah as Peter spoke to, I would be interested to know if in those communities today, if there is a 5% franchise fee that exists and if there is in those communities what percentage of the franchise fee go specifically to peg access today? I would just comment with respect to the sales tax also that right now 100% of the sales tax goes to the Education Fund and it would be a broad discussion in the legislature to talk about sales tax revenues even if you're expanding it anyway. But yeah, so, Thomas. Should I talk about my meeting table here? Oh, I would love that. Okay, Karen. So this is actually a table that we put together for the government operations committees a couple of years ago and all it really does is list out the variety of inter-municipal districts and their purposes that are authorized in statute today in Vermont. And we can only, we're Dylan's real estate, I won't explain that to y'all right now, but we can only enter into these kinds of district entities if they're specifically authorized in statute. So I think what's interesting is that some of them, aside from the purposes and aside from the sort of general willingness of the legislature to say, yeah, you can try this, telecommunications union districts and Reddy's rural economic development infrastructure districts are the most recently added. And the legislature definitely has an open mind about saying, yeah, if you think this will work to meet your purposes in whatever endeavor you're pursuing will give you the authorizing legislation. Several of them may use the property tax directly, basically school districts which are under union municipal districts, municipalities themselves. The others can use fees that are raised from the service they're providing wastewater or water supply fees or assessments that are voted on a particular district, special assessment districts or they're funded through property taxes that are raised at the municipality and then provided to the whatever the special district is. I should mention that with respect to mass transit authorities, which is a little more than halfway down the list and provides for public transit and GMTA, those kinds of things, that actually it's a mix of apportioning costs to each member of municipalities. So up in Chittenden County where you've got bus lines in Burlington, South Burlington and so forth that they have an assessment that they pay to the mass transit authority but the out towns are based on donations. So then in the same way that the peg stations go and ask the towns for a donation at town meeting, that's what the public transit authorities do as well. And as you can see, there's a variety of governance models there also. So that's just by way of what's in place today. And I don't know if there's questions or... Do you see any applicable to this conversation? Well, it's interesting because the telecommunications union municipal district might be one that could be sort of twisted to apply to peg stations. But you know, these aren't statewide groups. These are groups that are created by a number of municipalities, generally speaking, adjoining each other. So the public safety authority in central Vermont is two towns now that have gone together. The mass transit authorities might be the most expansive in terms of number of municipalities but there's not a statewide group. The only other one that comes to mind that is not on this list yet, but will be at some point are the clean water service providers which is embodied in legislation that you passed this year to address clean water and that is going to be deployed, implemented through regional entities yet to be created. So I did you have a question? I don't. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Thanks. So we have 15 minutes and I would love to know from the group here, Lauren Glenn has given us a lot to chew on as has Karen and Peter. Are there ideas that individuals have had on this work group about funding sources that haven't come up in the documents and the testimony that we've heard so far? I know I'm still digesting all of this but I'd love to just talk to group about what other ideas should we be putting on the table? So can I offer one thing? Sure. I like your word digest. I think we have a lot of digest. There's a lot to digest and I wanna be clear that as I said earlier we only have a few more meetings. We're going to also have a public hearing. I know that in speaking with the vice chair we wanna head into the legislative session with some kind of roadmap on this issue. And so I think we all feel somewhat pressed for time and space and so I think some of what needs to happen is gonna be outside of this work here in this room that each of us need to sit down and really, as I said, digest. So, but we will not be having additional meetings beyond this, that is not our charge. And so we all have to take on the responsibility of doing some of this intellectual work on our own before we come back together. I think that's a good idea that we commit to doing that before our next meeting. I also think we'll be a little more public with the resolution of our bigger issue which hopefully will look favorably upon our work. You know, I wanna say too that I think that everyone has done a great deal of work. Our public presenters, so far the members of the group that have presented. And I just wanna be, at least from my perspective on it, respectfully be careful that we don't just keep in mind that we don't become a solution in search of a problem as well. In the sense that we look at current funding mechanisms, we look at the trends that have existed over the past decade, and we look out into the future to be sure that we continue to keep the peg in the AMOs as a viable option, but that we are just careful in that approach as well. Well, I think you make a good point because we're not, the revenue isn't declining steeply today this minute. And so if we, for example, were to say, oh, let's have a half cent on the sales tax as a way forward, it's really hard to make a case that you need that money in 2021, 2022. So I think we have to just keep that in mind of how we might structure some alternatives, how we might lay the groundwork for revisiting the alternatives. So I think we have to think about some other models that may also maybe include kind of trust fund models or just we have to take the long view because what will happen, probably, I mean, I'm not, let me restate that, I don't know what will happen, but I suspect that the revenue is going to be going like this. And I know that CONCAS is working very hard to keep the revenue not going in that direction, but it will start to decline. And then at the same time, the FCC is mounting these dockets. I mean, they've just had one that we kind of, you know, they said we're not gonna take the cost of a channel and subtract that from the funds that you received today, but we haven't yet decided. We didn't say no, we just put it aside for now. We don't know, for example, how CONCAS might implement that order. The FCC is now taking up the question of leased access, which is a kind of public access, but you pay for. Really, we see that as a step towards making a case against peg access, ultimately. So it's a steady threat. And I think we have to be positioned as a state to respond when any of those corners get turned. And so that's really what we're talking about is how to prepare, it's how to prepare and what makes sense and what latitude do we have. So I understand the question of timing is one that's on the table. I think that's fair. I just wanted to comment. I believe that the product that the committee, this is in the form of draft legislation, my study committee is mixed up. So that's why I had Mike print out our charge so that we could all remind ourselves. Does everybody have a document in front of them? So, reading from creation under section 27, peg access study committee. There is creative peg access study committee. The committee shall consider changes to the state's cable franchising authority and develop for legislative consideration, alternative regulatory and funding mechanisms to support public educational and government peg access channels and services communities across Vermont. Yeah, and E requires that the report come in the recommendation draft legislation. And so that militates toward coming up with an actionable, you know, obviously you have to. You can't report we're gonna do nothing because that's against the law. We have to do something. And so I guess the question that I'm left with after hearing today's presentation, which I thought all were very good. And I very much appreciated the fan presentation. It's just, what is the revenue requirement? Just like a black and white. Because I think that question answers what you do about it. If you know exactly how much money you need, when you need it. Without that question answered, I wouldn't know how to respond. Obviously I have an employer, my boss, his boss has very clear opinions about taxation. So that puts me in a particular position with regard to a discussion about taxation. But before you even get there, I think that you have to answer the question. Absolutely. What do we need? I'm not sure that we're gonna be able to answer that question right now. Based on your assessment of revenues in the next few years. And I do not suggesting that we do this, but I do think that we could say we're not ripe for legislation yet. You don't have to write legislation if it's not gonna actually accomplish anything right now. So a couple of thoughts is one, is that considering the differences in distribution that we're seeing, apart from broadcast over cable, now it's going over the internet and everything. I'm looking at how do we make the funding more equitable across the various distribution channels. And that's what we heard today from Peter Bloom speaks to part of that. The other thing is that it says through the report shall be in the form of draft legislation. So I think that's something we have to do. I'm gonna have to come up with the draft legislation in order to reflect what we consider here. And I assume that's gonna require us to come to some sort of consensus on what that should be. I think it's hard to, I mean you could say the revenue requirements $8 million or some variation on that, or you could say that it's not realistic to expect that we would get $8 million from an alternative revenue source for the state. I mean, that's a lot of money. When $8 million comes to the table and a state budget discussion, that's a big significant discussion. So it may be that we think of some different ways to skin the cat over time, start to set aside dollars that become a fund. So just in terms of the dollars that are needed, we can give a number, but I think we then have to walk the cat backwards and say what are some of the alternative ways to get to it. And we're pretty much foreclosed from several ways of getting the money on the internet side. So I think for us to have some clarity about what are the ways, given what we know now, what are the two or three possible ways to skin the internet cat? These poor cat letters out there. I'm walking a lot of cats. Sorry. We're walking forwards, backwards. Walking, skinning, yeah. I'm sorry. It's okay, we're all a little loopy at this point. But I think it would be really helpful to have some Ledge Council research on, given what we know. Sure. How could we proceed? Absolutely. And then we would know how much revenue that could possibly generate. We could also address other issues in terms of broadband equity up here, asterisk. And it also, yeah. So I think that that would be important to know what we can do, what the legislature actually has the authority to require. And then we may start to work on, well, what is a realistic portion of this budget for the legislature to fund? And what do we expect the Peg Access Centers to go out and start operating more like your typical nonprofits? Right. Right. So I think, I mean, I think we understand that this will ultimately be a combination of state funds, municipal funds, philanthropic funds, underwriting funds, fees for service, membership. Right. You know, that that pie in 10 years is gonna look different than it does today. Such an excellent point, because I think Clay's question is a good one, that we have to keep in mind what is the revenue required, but the caveat is we're not charged with coming up with all the entire eight million in figuring that out. That as you say, we have to really think about how that pie chart is gonna evolve over the next 10, 20 years. I think this is a good place to wrap. I would just love to take the last couple minutes, Maria, if I could have you recap for us. So this was our third meeting, correct? Here's a question that I have for you. So looking at powers and duties of the committee, I'm not clear on whether one of our six meetings that we are allowed to be reimbursed for includes the public meeting or is the public meeting in addition to? And then the third question I have is, could we have a public meeting and then as a group meet at the conclusion of that public meeting? So we just love. Just about to suggest maybe that latter option to the extent there's any ambiguity. You could hold a public hearing and have a meeting immediately following. Okay. And it would all capture any of the expenses that we do not want to do. Great. I think that's the seventh meeting. Exactly. I mean, I think we, of course, we all support the public meeting. It was important for us to have it. Those of us in the committee who made sure that this language got in, but I would be very scared to give up the entire work meeting to a public meeting and then not have a chance for us to digest that. And so it does mean more of a time commitment on our part to meet after the public meeting, but I wanted to get a sense from people if you're willing to do that so that we don't lose that entire meeting time. Does that make sense? Lauren, Glenn, does that make sense? So then what I'll do, I will huddle up with Maria and Mike and we will get a poll out to committee members and figure out dates that make sense for all of us. And we'll do that in the next couple of days so that we can get a date out to the public as soon as possible so folks can start making plans to come and testify. Do you anticipate holding that public meeting here or going outside of Long Pealier, which is, you know, might get you a different set of comments? That is a great question for the committee. I have no agenda and so I would love to hear your thoughts on that, Karen, whether you think we'll- I think you'll get a different set of comments outside of Long Pealier. Right, and so of course the danger in doing that is we have one public meeting, where do you hold it? So it is essentially enough located that folks from around the state can attend. So again, something for us, we can certainly have this conversation in addition to a doodle poll where we think makes the most sense and where we can be accommodated. I don't think you're wrong. It's just, as someone who drove two hours this morning to get here from Brattleboro, like depending on where it is, I want to make sure it's still somewhat centrally located for folks. How do other folks feel about that? And I know you- Any location, any location. I'll go to Brattleboro if you want me to. It's a little easier for you. I'd also just say, I think we want to have a public hearing where we have something to present for reflection. In other words, we could have a public hearing where everyone comes and tells us how great public access TV is, but we've had those hearings. We have that already down. We know that. But what I think we want is, here are some possible ways of going forward. What do you think about that? Is a sales tax gonna fly? Is a connection fee gonna fly? And make sure that we invite people to weigh in on this. Not just the public. Sure. There are supporters who will come and say, keep funding public access, but people who are experts in the field or who will have an opinion on the wisdom of an additional sales tax that's not gonna go in the ed fund, for example. Just an example. Or amusement tax or, you know, why didn't the cloud tax go anywhere last year? Is this gonna be a rehash of that discussion? So I think we wanna have some conversations here and then come up with some ideas that then could get us more insight. Absolutely. I think that's an excellent point. We are here because we believe in the value of peg access. And we have many people in the legislature who already believe in that and many townspeople on citizens across Vermont who believe in that. So we don't need to be convinced of that. We really need the brainpower of the state to come and help us wrestle with these options. So I think it's a good point. We can talk more about how we wanna structure that. So anything else from the committee or from the staff? So just to clarify. Yeah. The legislation tells us that we should have at least one public hearing. And I was under the impression that all of these meetings we're having are public hearings. So do we need one in addition to this? Our regularly scheduled meetings? I think as I've read it and I've rammed it, but I don't understand what you understood. Exactly what was meant by just the way that it's written on it for the weekend. The committee should be pretty sure that the committee's authorized to meet up to six times. It's Easter's, it's on December 15th. The committee shall hold at least one public hearing on the value of pay as it's television for the long communities, the costs of such programming and services and funding options. So I read that as all of those topics are presented for the public to come in and talk about each of those, respond to something that you want them to respond to. But that's really a public forum, public hearing, hour, hour and a half, what have you, that that's separate from the six meetings that the committee is. And as someone who was on finance where we wrestled with this wording, as you know, this is a perfect example of hamburger making and so, but I think the committee was very strong in their belief that there should be a time dedicated that we actually invited people in. And yes, there is a public comment period for each of our meetings, but we wanted to err on the side of more input and not less input. So, any other questions? So the public hearing be after the next meeting potentially, is that something that you would come back to us with based on what happens? I wanna have a conversation with the vice chair about the logistics going forward and sort of do a little backwards design, figure out where we need to end up by when and do some date checks on that. And so again, we're gonna huddle up over the next week and we'll get a doodle poll out to all of you about dates. But that's, I'm not clear on that and how that should work in terms of when we need to produce a product and how much time we're gonna need to do that. So, bear with me. Thank you, very much appreciated. Thank you. Is our September date set?